A Sort of Fairy Tale
by fireblazie
Summary: In which there is a prince, a damsel in distress, mythical creatures, and magic. HeijixKazuha.
1. In which a house is blown up

**Disclaimer**: Gosho Aoyama and Walt Disney make 'em. I torture 'em (translation: I own nothing, absolutely nothing).

_A Sort of Fairy Tale_

Chapter 1: In which a house is blown up

This story is different, and I don't mean 'different' as in, oh-my-goodness, it will absolutely blow you away much like the 'different' story of a certain wizard with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, or even like the 'different' story of an exceedingly intelligent young seventeen-year-old who stuck his nose in where it didn't belong and ended up in the body of a seven-year-old. This story is different in that it is refreshingly simple.

This story, like many others I'm sure you are all very familiar with, is a fairy tale.

What are the necessary ingredients of a fairy tale? Well, of course, there has to be a prince – a dashing, handsome Prince Charming. Then there has to be a damsel in distress. Preferably a beautiful young Princess of some sort. And after that, some kind of mythical creature, like, say… the Seven Dwarves.

Something's missing. What is it?

Ah, of course.

_Magic_.

For what is a fairy tale without magic? It would certainly be a very lacking one, wouldn't it? No no, that would not do at all. This fairy tale _must_ include magic.

So let's backtrack. We have the prince, the damsel in distress, mythical creatures, and magic.

Well, it looks to me as though we have everything. And so, let us begin.

-OOO-

When Kazuha was little, her parents died. She was barely over four years old. After their deaths, there had been a lot of arguments on who would end up taking her in.

In the end, her seven uncles, septuplets, had ended up with the job.

Happy cheerfully watched her, nibbling on apple slices. "Oh, but she's so cute," he gushed, making faces at her.

"She smells," Sleepy complained, rubbing his eyes.

"I think she needs a bath," Doc observed.

All seven men stared at each other.

"Can she bathe herself, do you think?" asked Sneezy in between sneezes.

Kazuha smiled at them. "Of course I can!" And trotted off to the bathroom.

Dopey tilted his head. "Well, this is going to be interesting!" he declared.

Nobody commented.

-OOO-

When Heiji was little, his parents died. Having been the sole son of his parents, who conveniently happened to be the King and Queen of a faraway and very well-to-do kingdom, there had been almost total pandemonium when the news of his parents' deaths spread.

"Well, little Heiji is the heir, of course," the Royal Advisor had put his two cents in. "But he's barely older than four. What are we to do?"

"He could be a figurehead," someone had supplied, "and we could put him on the throne while we pull the strings from behind."

Heiji had frowned, clutching his teddy bear.

"Or," a deep feminine voice, wearing billowing cloaks of black, had suggested, "we could just kill him."

The teddy bear fell.

After this point, Heiji's memory would fail him, and he would only be able to recall the slightest bits and pieces. What he did remember, however, was that he had been sent into the forest with a tall, imposing man with an axe in his hand.

"Are you going to kill me?" Heiji asked, calmly, much like a boy his age would say, 'Are you going to give me candy?'

"I'm supposed to," the man admitted.

"Oh. Well, all right then. Let's get it over with."

The man hefted his big, heavy axe onto his shoulder and raised it, preparing to swing it down on the small boy's neck. But at the very last second, he paused, uncertain.

"Are you _sure_ you're okay with this?"

"Well, I'd much rather you let me live," Heiji answered, conversationally, "but you're not going to let me live, are you?"

The man scrutinized him. "Well…I might," he conceded.

"Really? Wouldn't that creepy lady get mad?"

"She wouldn't have to know," the man said dismissively. "By the way, you have a very impressive vocabulary for a four year old."

"Four-and-a-half, actually."

"Oh. Right." An awkward silence hung in the air. "Well, you know, I guess I'll be going. Promised to be back before sundown and all."

"Okay." Heiji turned around and prepared to venture deeper into the forest. "Goodbye, then."

"Oh. Ah, goodbye."

-OOO-

The only memento Kazuha had of her parents was a small picture, slightly crinkled at the edges, of a handsome man in his early thirties, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties, and a toddler with pigtails. That was her, that much she knew. She kept this picture underneath her pillow and kissed it before she went to sleep, every night.

Years had passed, and she was now fifteen, still living with her seven uncles. It had been a strange living arrangement at first, but she had grown accustomed to it and could honestly say that she had no complaints.

"Uncle Doc," she began, pleasantly, "I can't find any bacon."

Uncle Doc peered at her over the tip of his newspaper. "Really? I could have sworn I'd asked Grumpy to pick some up…"

Said uncle glared from the sink, where he was doing the dishes. "I _refuse_ to pick up any _pig meat_, I tell you! Absolutely disgusting, eating a dead animal. What's wrong with broccoli and carrots? Vegetarianism is the way to go."

"But Uncle Grumpy," Kazuha interjected, "I like meat."

Grumpy shot her a glare. "You wouldn't, if you'd been raised the way I'd wanted. Bossy, controlling, the lot of you. One day, I'll move out…" His complaints subsided into angry mutters. Doc offered Kazuha an apologetic smile, and the young girl decided to settle for toast that morning, instead.

It was a good life. A little boring, perhaps, and one could argue that she deserved better than to be cooped up in a modestly sized house in the middle of the forest with seven uncles. But she was happy, so what else could you do? 

-OOO-

"We should let him rest."

"It's _noon_."

"But he's a growing boy, for crying out loud, he needs all the sleep he can get. Otherwise he'll remain short for the rest of his life."

"He's only fifteen, you little nincompoop, he'll have plenty of time to grow."

"But he was up way past midnight yesterday –"

"Plotting his revenge, which as we all agree is a very worthy thing to stay up for."

"Revenge, revenge, revenge! Is that all you think about? At this rate, he's going to have wrinkles by eighteen and be bald by twenty-one."

"I resent that." Heiji sat up, rubbing his eyes blearily. "Good god, my head hurts."

"You slept on a rock," a tiny, glasses-donning, bowtie-wearing Fairy said. "We tried to move you, but then we found that there was no place to move you _to_, and…"

"I don't feel good," Heiji said, turning green.

"Well, whatever you do, don't get it on the suit," a tiny Fairy reprimanded him, wearing an impeccable white suit, hat, and monocle.

"I want a bucket," Heiji whined.

The two Fairies looked at each other, and then the fairy with glasses smacked the fairy with the monocle soundly on the head.

"Did you spike the punch again?" he demanded.

The one with the monocle rubbed at his head, where a lump was rapidly growing. "That _hurt_, damn you."

They both ceased their arguments when the sounds of Heiji retching on the green grass caught their ears.

The Fairy with glasses turned his nose up. "_You_ clean up," he said to the one with the monocle, disappearing in a cloud of sprinkles.

-OOO-

Kazuha had a feeling that something wasn't quite right. If asked, she really wouldn't know how to describe it… except that it was, quite simply, a 'feeling'.

From her position on the couch, she checked off various items in her head. Uncle Doc was reading. Uncle Grumpy was grumbling. Uncle Happy was cheerfully whistling as he vacuumed the living room. Uncle Sneezy was taking his pills. Uncle Sleepy was snoring. Uncle Dopey was also taking his pills. Uncle Bashful was in his corner, talking to the mice. Perfect.

So what was wrong?

She reached over, absentmindedly snatching an orange from the table. Uncle Doc walked past just as she finished peeling and popped a slice into her mouth. Funny, she thought hazily, everything seemed to be spinning around now.

"Kazuha? KAZUHA?" She had the vague feeling of being shaken, violently, before she lapsed into the depths of unconsciousness.

After she fainted, her seven uncles stood around her, each looking pensive.

Grumpy stared at Sleepy. "Didn't we tell you _not_ to mess with the orange? We told you to screw with the _apple_, you idiot. Did we _not_ have a Family Meeting about this?"

"S – S – Sorry," Sleepy managed, between yawns.

"So what now?" Bashful asked, uncertain.

"Well, the only way to wake her up is with a sign of True Love," Doc said, wisely.

All seven men stared at each other.

"Where did we put that glass coffin again?"

-OOO-

"I'm going to press this button," Heiji said, matter-of-factly, "and then the Castle will blow up."

The two Fairies looked skeptical, although the one with the monocle looked fairly amused. "I thought you only wanted to kill the Queen," he pointed out.

"I don't want to live in a Castle that's been inhabited by such an evil person," Heiji reasoned, "her evil germs and all. I'd much rather build an entirely new Castle, just for me."

"Oh. Okay."

"Right, then. So, Conan –" He pointed to the Fairy with glasses and a bowtie, "just fly up to that branch over there – to the left – no, my left, your right – okay, good, and just stare at the Castle in the distance. Let me know when it falls."

"Roger."

"And then you, Kid –" He pointed to the Fairy with the white suit and monocle, "hold this wire down. Just – just sit on it."

"All right!"

"You guys ready?" At their nods of assent, Heiji closed his eyes and pressed the button, waiting anxiously.

BOOM.

There was a pause while clouds of black smoke billowed around them. "So," Heiji said, clearing his throat, "what happened?"

"The Castle's still standing," Conan reported.

"_What_?"

"It's still standing," Conan repeated, pointing in the distance. "Come on, you can see it from down there. It's as healthy as it ever was."

"But it _should_ have worked!" Heiji was close to wailing now, if he did that sort of thing.

"Well," Kid said, clearing his throat through the smoke, "something _did_ blow up."

At this, both Heiji and Conan whirled around. Kid was pointing in the opposite direction, where a modest-sized house in the middle of the forest had just fallen to pieces.

Heiji felt like banging his head against the nearest tree. "Oh, crap."

Kid shook his head reproachfully. "You can say that again."

-OOO-

Grumpy was never really a very happy person, when he stopped to think about it, because that was more of Happy's thing, anyway. He wasn't a very calm person either, who sat down and thought things through, because that was more of Doc's thing.

Grumpy was the sort of person who, "frankly, my dear, didn't give a damn" and, when things didn't go his way, was prone to swearing down the heavens (one could argue that little Kazuha had inherited this trait from him).

Therefore, his temper had already been at an alarming high when his charge had fainted from eating an accidentally cursed orange. His temper simply rose when there was a loud, echoing _BOOM_ and the house he had lived in for years came crashing down around his ankles.

But still, his anger management classes in mind, he tried to stay calm.

"Dopey," he began, "the house has fallen to pieces around us."

He turned and found that Dopey was dead.

His forehead twitched. He'd have to bury him later. He walked on through the debris. "Happy?" Also six feet under, right underneath the glass table. "Bashful?" He'd passed on, too. "Sleepy?" For a moment, he'd thought he was simply sleeping…but no, no, he was – well, he was quite gone. "Sneezy?" Who was he kidding. It was dead silent, and even when he was asleep Sneezy still sneezed the roof off. "Doc? Come _on_, Doc!" But he was dead as a doornail.

Grumpy could admit that he _did _feel a slight pang somewhere in his left chest area. After all, he'd grown up with his other six brothers. They'd always been together, as far back as he could remember. And now – well, it just seemed so _odd_, for lack of a better word, to suddenly have to face the world without them, all alone.

But he still had the girl, he thought, his niece –

He stopped, practically running into what was left of their wall.

"Kazuha?" he asked, furrowing his brown. The glass coffin they'd encased her in was gone. Simply, truly gone. Which was suspicious. Because if the coffin had been broken into a million shards, that would have been one thing. But the coffin _and_ the girl were both gone.

This, then, meant that the impact of the blow had caused her to fly off into the distance. Which, then, meant that _he_ had the responsibility of looking for her.

Dammit.

-OOO-

"I don't _want_ to apologize!"

"You could have killed them, for all you know," Conan reprimanded him severely. "At least check the place out."

Heiji huffed but went in the direction of the now-fallen house. Okay, so he did feel a little guilty, and he still wasn't entirely sure why the Castle hadn't blown up, because he had planned this out so, so carefully, and everything was supposed to be absolutely perfect and the Queen was supposed to be dead right now and then he could finally take back the Castle that was rightfully his and –

Ow.

"What was that?" he tried to ask, but his mouth was filled with dirt.

"You tripped," Kid informed him, somewhat of a gleeful smile on his face.

"On a _person_," Conan added, wide-eyed.

At those words, Heiji sprang up. Sure enough, there was a person, lying on the dirt, face-down. There was some sort of glass box-like contraption nearby, but he didn't pay it any mind. He knelt down beside her, gingerly.

"Is she dead, do you think?" he whispered.

"No, she's not," Conan said, "but she's pretty passed out."

"Hm." Heiji poked her and then rolled her over so that she was face-up. Dark brown hair in a messy ponytail. Pale skin. "Wake up," he called.

Nothing.

"Wake up," he repeated.

Still, nothing.

"Wake her up the way _we_ wake you up," Kid suggested.

Heiji looked properly horrified. "You want me to slap her?"

Kid shrugged. "Well, just, you know, _lightly_."

Heiji _lightly_ tapped her cheek.

"We could throw a bucket of water on her," Kid went on. "Or we could lift her skirt up. I hear that that works pretty well."

"We just want to wake her up, not molest her, thank you," Conan said, dryly.

It was at this point that a certain dwarf named Grumpy who had just survived a near-death encounter stumbled onto the scene. He caught the eye of a certain glasses-wearing Fairy, who flew to his side to talk to him.

"Hello," Conan said, pleasantly.

"Back at 'cha," Grumpy said. "Were you the idiots who blew up my house?"

Conan's pleasant smile fell, replaced with a more contrite one. "Sorry…"

Grumpy waved him off. "That girl right there is my niece. She's under a spell, of sorts."

"Oh." Conan looked over at where Kid and Heiji were still hovering over the comatose girl. "I – _we_ feel bad about what we did to your house. Say, maybe we could help you break the spell on your niece?"

"I doubt it," Grumpy snorted. "The only way to break that spell is with a sign of True Love. I swear, if Sleepy weren't dead, I'd kill him."

Conan looked mildly alarmed.

"But you're wasting precious time," Kid was telling Heiji, "don't you have a little deadline to meet?" He gestured towards the Castle.

At this, Heiji's expression changed and he grabbed the unconscious girl by the shoulders and started screaming. "YOU IDIOT! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!" He shook her quite violently, paying no heed to the fact that her head was lolling rather unhealthily on her shoulders.

"Hardly an expression of True Love," Grumpy muttered.

And that was when Kazuha woke up.

_- To be continued -_


	2. In which the shoe doesn't fit

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing.

_A Sort of Fairy Tale_

Chapter 2: In which the shoe doesn't fit

The last thing Kazuha remembered before she'd completely passed out was the nice, slightly tangy taste of a ripened orange. Oranges had always been her favorite fruit, and she was known to spend many an afternoon simply sitting in the comforts of her living room, snacking on them.

The sight she woke up to, however, was most definitely not her living room. In fact, she wasn't even in her house. No, she was in the middle of the goshdarned _forest_ with a somewhat handsome boy _manhandling_ her, demanding that she wake up.

She blinked.

"She's awake," a tiny little… well, a Fairy was all Kazuha could think to describe it, said, wonderingly. She had the sudden urge to pinch his cheeks. "But I thought only a sign of True Love could break the spell?"

"A sign of True Love?" Another Fairy perked up at those choice words, monocle gleaming in the sunlight. "So little Heiji's finally growing up?"

And there was Uncle Grumpy, looking thoughtful in the corner. Finally, a face she recognized! "Sleepy must not have quite gotten it right," he was saying to himself.

Her gaze returned to the boy who was kneeling in front of her, his grip still tight on her shoulders.

"Ouch," she said, quite audibly.

This word seemed to snap him out of his reverie. He let go quickly, and the sudden loss of support almost sent Kazuha sprawling backwards on the dirt floor. "Okay," he said, standing up and brushing the dust from his pants, "you're awake. You can go live happily ever after. I'm going to go and kill the Queen."

Kazuha coughed, her throat sore. "Okay. Fine." She stood up, gingerly testing her balance. She was all good and ready to tell that horrible, rude boy he could go _shove it_ for all she cared when she caught sight of what used to be her house.

She reached out and grabbed said boy by the collar, ignoring his yelps.

"What happened to my house?" she questioned, voice and expression icy cold.

The boy let out a sheepish laugh. "Ahaha. Yeah. About that…"

-OOO-

"Fix it," she said, simply.

"What?" The boy, Heiji, as she had just recently learned, stared at her in disbelief. "No way!"

"Yes, way!" she insisted, emphasizing each syllable with a hard jab to his chest. "You broke my house. Now I have nowhere to live in. Do you want to make an innocent girl have to fend for herself in the horrors of this FOREST? Don't you know what's in this forest, don't you, don't you?"

"Mushrooms, oak trees, a few pine trees, berries, nuts, squirrels, a lake or two, with fish," came the easy reply. "There's hardly anything to scare anyone."

"There are _bears_ in this forest, you moron," she said, flailing her arms wildly. She looked like she was about to start wailing. "I can't live like this!"

"I've lived in this forest for over ten years," he told her, matter-of-factly, "there are no bears."

This seemed to surprise her. "None?" she asked, lip quivering.

The 'lip quivering' seemed to disturb him quite a bit. "None," he said, firmly, after regaining his composure.

"But –" and here she turned to Grumpy, "Uncle Dopey told me…"

"There's your answer right there, kid," Grumpy said, gruffly, "Uncle _Dopey_."

"Oh." Kazuha appeared to feel very foolish indeed now. As she stared at the remnants of her house, she promptly started to complain again, "but you blew up my house!"

"It was an unfortunate accident," Heiji said, looking snootily down at her. Kazuha couldn't help but wonder at his sudden change of tone and diction. "And I offer you my sincerest apologies, and I would dearly, _dearly_ love to help, but I'm afraid I have to meet a deadline…"

"What?" Kazuha asked, blankly.

Heiji pinched the bridge of his nose. "It was an accident, all right? I'm freaking _sorry_ but I have to go and kill that stupid Queen, okay?"

"No, it is NOT okay!" Kazuha bristled. Conan and Kid refrained from bursting out into schoolgirl-esque giggles at the sight of Heiji being screamed at by a girl who was at the very least six inches shorter than him (which was quite a feat, for Heiji wasn't _that_ tall himself). "You ruined my house! Where am I supposed to live?"

Heiji twitched. "Go build a tent, then."

"A TENT?"

Heiji covered his ears. "I'd thank you very much to refrain from _shrieking_ like a banshee," he said, stiffly.

"And I would thank _you_ very much to refrain from being a total _bastard_," she retorted, ignoring his open-mouthed look, "and to _please_ help me rebuild my house."

"It was an accident, and I have a very important matter of business to attend to!" he argued, getting over her use of such a vulgar word. He hadn't been around girls very much, but weren't they supposed to be delicate and not swear at Prince Charmings? "Your uncle – he'll help you, won't he?"

Her voice simply rose along with her temper. "Speaking of uncles, I seem to be missing _six _of them!"

He blanched. "I said I was –"

"BEAR."

He blinked. "No, I was –"

"You incomprehensible moron, there is a BEAR behind you!" And she took off running, ponytail flipping behind her. Grumpy balked, swore under his breath, and followed after. Conan and Kid remained with him, staring, just staring.

"There is _so_ not a bear behind me," Heiji said.

"There kind of is," Kid said, "maybe you should run."

"Maybe," Heiji agreed. "You guys can take care of him, can't you?"

Conan and Kid shrugged. "We'll see."

"Wha –"

"Just a piece of advice, maybe you should start running," Conan said, conversationally.

"But –"

"ROAR."

Heiji gulped as he felt the stomps quaking the earth behind him. "Bye." And ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

-OOO-

Heiji found that he caught up to That Girl and Her Uncle rather quickly, considering that he was far taller than both of them, _and_ he'd had experience in running away from things.

"I don't know how," Kazuha managed in between laboured breaths, "but this is YOUR fault somehow."

"Shut up and run," he spat.

-OOO-

"No, no, I really think we ought to use That spell," Conan said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

Kid frowned. "No, no, I think that This spell would be much more efficient. Less blood, you know."

"Less blood, yes, but a greater chance of the thing _regenerating_ and chasing after us with green slime and a deformed paw."

"Well, I just think that it would be in very unpleasant taste to just kill the poor creature from the inside out. Have a heart, man!"

"Oh, this coming from the one who wanted to cast the Spell-That-Cannot-Be-Named on the Queen? That's rich!"

"Well, we kind of have to make a decision as to which spell we are going to use before –" And the Bear, looking to be very angry and frustrated about being caught in their magical net, swiped at it furiously and continued on his merry rampage, following the footprints Heiji and co. had so conveniently left behind.

" – before the Bear decides to pick up where he left off," Kid finished weakly.

-OOO-

"My shoe!" Heiji exclaimed, stopping abruptly in his mad dash away from the Bear.

Kazuha, for reasons unknown to herself, also stopped. "You moron!" she said, rolling her eyes to the heavens as he ran back and grabbed his shoe.

He practically dove, his face mere inches from the ground as he closed outstretched fingers around his precious shoe…

And hastily withdrew his hand just as a pair of shiny and sharp teeth closed around his fingers.

"YOU TOTAL LOSER!" Kazuha wailed at him, grabbing his arm and dragging him behind her. "LOOK WHAT YOU DID!"

He ignored her, but did answer back with a particular angry tirade of his own. "MY SHOES!" he screamed, "MY _CONVERSE_ SHOES!" He looked like he had half a mind to run back there, shove his hand down the Bear's throat, and retrieve his left shoe.

"Don't you _dare_ –" Kazuha hissed. "What kind of an idiot goes to get his head bitten off by a bear just because of some silly shoes?"

"They are _not_ silly!" Heiji was whining now. "They're _Converse_, you unfashionable woman! And that _Bear_ just ate my shoe!"

"Well, they were ugly anyway."

Heiji stopped to give her a "oh-no-you-_didn't_" Look. "You did _not_ just insult the single greatest shoe company on the planet, you – you – you –"

"WILL YOU RUN ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF –"

_Poof_.

The Bear was gone.

"Sorry we're late," Kid said, scratching his head sheepishly, Conan following after with a more dignified expression.

"You bet you're late!" Heiji snarled, "thanks to you, that Bear got my sho –"

He trailed off as he spied an unidentifiable mess sitting pleasantly on the dirt path, glinting in the sunlight.

"Hey, look!" Kid said, zipping past the open-mouthed boy and heading straight for the said mess, "it's your shoe! Or what's left of it, anyway!"

-OOO-

Kazuha stared at him with a look that spoke volumes of pity and disgust. "Stop – stop _crying_…"

"I am _not_ crying."

She rolled her eyes.

"You're annoying," she told him, bluntly, as she reached over, grabbed the remnants of Heiji's precious Converse shoes, and shoved them on his feet.

"Now that that's taken care of…" She pointed to where her house used to stand. "FIX MY HOUSE."

Heiji's mouth had dropped open however, and he was currently pointing at his shoes, which hung limply by his big toe, "You just made it _worse_!"

This continued on for quite some time until Kid spotted a battered pumpkin lying off to the path a few feet in front of them. He tilted his head to the side, deep in thought.

He checked to make sure that Conan wasn't looking. That fairy was such a party pooper, honestly, always stopping him from having fun and just this once, if he would just _look the other way for maybe about five minutes and _–

Kid zipped past the arguing teenagers, slipped his wand discreetly from his pocket, and chanted a few words under his breath. _Swish and flick_ went the motions of his wand, and yes, yes, yes, he thought, he'd actually gotten away with it when he felt the undeniable pressure of a wand against the back of his neck.

"Drop the wand," Conan said, through gritted teeth, "and no one gets hurt."

"BUT IT'S _MY_ SHOE –"

"AND IT'S _MY_ HOUSE –"

Kid arched an eyebrow.

Conan sighed. "Oh, just do it already."

Kid smiled with maniacal glee.

And that was how, for the next hour, Heiji and Kazuha came to find themselves trapped in a pumpkin-shaped carriage.

-OOO-

"It's not that I don't _want_ you tagging along," Heiji began, diplomatically.

Kazuha snorted in a rather unladylike fashion.

"Okay. It is." He frowned at her. "And like I've said before, I'm really very sorry about your house, but I don't have the time to rebuild the stupid thing." He paused. "Okay. Here's an idea. You can come along until we find like, a little inn or something. And then you can stay there with your uncle."

"I'm not staying at an inn!" Kazuha wrinkled her nose. "Everybody comes and goes and then there's room service, and – and I want my own house back. I lived there all my life, with my uncles and my family and you can't take that away!"

"You can't come with me!" Heiji insisted, flailing his arms around. "I'm going off to kill the Queen. And I don't want a sensitive girl like you tagging along. You'd probably scream and throw up and – and all of that stuff when you saw the blood."

Kazuha stared. Because this was most definitely the first time someone had called her a 'sensitive girl'.

"First of all," she said, struggling to reign in her temper, "I'm not that sensitive of a girl. And second of all, why are you going to kill the Queen?"

"Because she killed my parents and tried to get me killed," he said, stiffly, and made up to try and shove the carriage door open. It didn't budge.

"Oh." For once, she was rendered speechless. "But – " And then a horrifying thought crossed her mind, "wait, do you mean you actually _saw_ her killing your parents?"

"No," he said, and then stopped. "Sort of. I don't remember much. I was only four. But…" He shook his head. "Whatever. I'm going to off the old hag's head, and _you're_ only going to get in the way."

Kazuha opened her mouth to protest. "I'll stay out of the way," she said, finally, "I mean, you never know, you might need some _help_…"

"That's what the pixies are for," Heiji answered, offhandedly.

"Well – okay, but still –"

"They have _magic powers_. Unless you've got fairy wings and a wand hidden somewhere on you, you're not going to be any more help than them. And they're kind of idiots as it is."

"I'm going!" She stood up only to hit her head on the ceiling. "Ow…"

"Stupid," Heiji said, exasperatedly, yanking her ponytail towards him so that he could inspect the growing lump on her head. "That's what I mean. Not that I _care_ about you, or anything, but I don't want you to get killed on account of me. You can't come with me. You've got to have other relatives, right? Why don't you stay with one of them?"

She avoided looking at him and Heiji tried not to wonder why her hair felt so much softer than his. "I don't have anyone else," she said, finally. "My parents died when I was little, too. Uncle Grumpy's all I have left. And – well, let's face it, he's not getting any younger, is he? He's not really up to getting a job. I suppose I could go and work some place if I had to. But where in the world are we supposed to go? _We have no place to go. _If you would just let us – go with you –"

Heiji sighed. "What in the world would make you think that we could offer you anything? We sleep in the woods, you know. It's not like I can really check into an inn with my name, because according to the Queen, I'm supposed to be dead. Not to mention the fact that we don't have any money. At all. We can't offer you safety, either, in case you didn't figure that out from the Bear earlier. I attract trouble. I guess you can handle yourself okay. But as you said, your uncle's not all that young – and _dammit_, why are you _crying_?"

"I MISS MY UNCLES!" She wailed.

Heiji felt a funny squirming feeling in his chest. Guilt? It _was_ his fault that her uncles had… well…

"They were the – they were – they were the only family I had left," she hiccupped, "and now – and now –"

"…fine." It came out as a mumble, barely audible.

Kazuha sniffled. "What?"

"You can – you can come with us." He avoided eye contact and tried to ignore the foreboding feeling that was flowing through his very body. "BUT! You have to take care of yourself. When we wake up, you wake up. You eat what we eat. You have to take turns keeping watch as well. You're not getting any special treatment because you're – you're a _girl_. You don't even act like one anyway. And – well, you just better make sure you pull your weight, okay? Make sure you know how to defend yourself because it's not like we're all going to go around protecting you when we have our own battles to fight. Okay?"

"Yes!" Her eyes sparkled. "Don't worry, you – you won't even know I'm here."

"And you still owe me a pair of shoes."

The sparkle in her eyes diminished. "…fine."

"Fine."

"Then I guess we have a deal."

"I guess we do."

"You can let go of my head now."

Blushing furiously, he dropped her head and shoved her away from him as quickly as possible. She ended up banging her head against the nearest wall. She glowered. He coughed.

"Sorry."

He could hear her muttering angrily under her breath. Good gosh, he was already regretting this.

-To be continued

_Hey, thanks for all the reviews! You have no idea how much they mean to me. :D As for this story, well, let's just say it's going to be as random as it gets. And we all know how random I can get, right? Haha. The updates will be rather sporadic, as my muse doesn't stick to schedules very well… heh. But, at any rate, please continue to review and support this story! _


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